Repainting your own old work

Eric

Eric

Administrator
I'd appreciate some thoughts and perspectives on repainting your own old miniatures. Is it something you do?

So generally anything I actually finished during my core wargaming misadventures keeps the paint job it had then, be that enamels or acrylics, good or bad. Some of it is okay some is a bit poor, but it forms part of my personal history and feels wrong to "bin it". I don't actually have many miniatures I painted as a youth in my cabinets (they still exist they are just not at my house and I assume my brother has not stripped them and repainted them!) so maybe I feel more nostalgic about what I have, but I've not stripped anything back that had wasn't just a bad primer job. So for instance I did that with the Doom Divers I painted for Orctober a year or two back, they had a chipped messy rattle-can primer on from my youth and had never made it any further, didn't fret about removing that and actually getting proper paint on. I've taken one or two partially started miniatures I've worked up and finished, I did that with my Harboth's where I'd started a couple those many decades ago, but everything else is left as-is. I've even bought "new" old models for a couple I wanted to have a go at repainting to avoid the need to strip an old paint job!

I'm now wondering about a model restoration project and just wanted to see if it's only me that's a sentimental old fart or if you're all cherishing your Orcs with blood splattered axes and crazy Marine home-brew chapter colours or if it's straight in the stripper with them!

So would appreciate your own takes ...
 
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Yeah, frequently. I've got a bunch of stuff in acetone at the moment (including one for the Femuary challenge!) that are my own paintjobs that I just didn't think worked. I let them sit for a while and see if I can leave them alone, sometimes for years, then just snap, decide they're awful and strip them.

Then they sit in the leadpile for years until I get around to them again (again!). :lol:
 
rarely can be bothered stripping old models I painted unless I got some real reason for it. Which did happen for some of my Skaven ^_^
 
It depends how much sentiment I've got attached to the particular model. I've recently bought a new spearman to paint up alongside one of my first paint jobs I was proud of, to see the progress and because I want the model in my army but don't want to strip the original. But if it's just a rubbishy half finished one, it goes in the acetone.
 
Eric said:
I'd appreciate some thoughts and perspectives on repainting your own old miniatures. Is it something you do?
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I don't have any of my old hobby items, I had to get rid of them :( (which is a bugger as I could have sold them to pay the mortgage off, so many MTG cards and books)

However I would strip them and repaint if I had a current use for them.
I prefer my painting now to that of teen me, so if I needed the models for a current project I would redo them as they would stand out from my current work and stand out in a not good way.

But, if I had no use for them in a current project I would keep them as they are.
 
i hit restart in 1999, after a miniature gaming hiatus. anything painted before then i fair game for stripping and, indeed i currently have some '80's ogres in the dettol jar.
 
Old pj's give me headaches, but I solved the issue getting doubles for all I could remotely be interested to have another go at.
My pj's from the '90s would be easily sacrificeable, btw; the ones from the '00s are better, but not a match for the current ones...better don't look at them and carry on:mrgreen:
 
Eric said:
Other than reading Tex's post as "my old pyjamas give me headaches" first time through and wondering what on earth he was on about I'd love to see your old vs new, given how stunning I think your work is. Of course no obligation if you'd rather not, but it'd be fascinating to see how far you've come.
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I'll duly oblige,sir, but it'll take some time, as my oldest painted minis are at my grandma's and i'll go there at Easter time.
I'll check if i have any pic in the phone gallery in the meantime.
But don't expect much, as i was still drybrushing like mad in the late '90s😁
 
For me it's a case by case basis. There are old paint jobs I'm a bit sentimental about, but there's probably nothing I'm unwilling to alter if there's a gaming purpose to it. Sometimes I've taken old paint jobs and added detail. Sometimes I've just painted over the old paint job. (Particularly early on when it was a second paint job over well thinned enamel and I hadn't discovered pine-sol.) These days it's most often strip and start over, but it needs to be something I really want to do to jump the que ahead of the unpainted pile. (If it's a miniature I really really like and want to use in a story, say, but the paint job is really old and doesn't look good on the table with my more recent stuff. Or even occasionally I just don't care for my youthful color choices anymore.)
 
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The joy for me is in the doing... Whenever I've finished a model, whatever it is, real world scale aircraft or car, fantasy or 40,000 or anything at all. I may keep it around for a few months or years then it goes to ebay.
I don't know why this is. Probably because I'm a bit of a perfectionist (lacking the skills to create a perfect model), I see the flaws and can't unsee them, and I've found they get damaged all too easily, or maybe it's my living situation which is a total mess and has been for years. Or maybe I just get sick and tired of brushing the dust off them. Whatever it is, I'm happy with some good photos saved and don't feel the need to keep the artifact once I call it done.
I don't think I ever stripped my own paint off anything. Meanwhile everything I buy that's painted gets stripped, even if the paintwork is decent (99% of the time it looks like a five year old did it with finger paints)
 
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